Fox News Power Rankings: Voters’ appetite for ticket-splitting will decide the Senate

Republicans have a favorable map, but Democratic candidates are on top in several battleground states. It is anyone’s game in the first Fox News Power Rankings for the Senate this cycle.

Ticket splitting will make the difference

If you know one fact about the 1984 presidential election, it’s that Ronald Reagan won in a landslide. With wins in 49 states and a total of 525 electoral college votes, no candidate has ever pulled off a larger victory.

You might not remember that in the same election, Republicans lost two Senate seats, leaving them with a total of just 53 in the upper chamber.

Outcomes like these used to be normal. Voters have opted for different party winners in more than a hundred races with a presidential and senate election on the same ballot in the postwar era, with the practice reaching its peak in the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, voters are much more loyal to their party. In the last presidential cycle, the electorate only chose different party winners in one out of the 35 states with presidential and senate races (Maine, where Susan Collins held on for a fifth term).

Calculated another way, Democratic and Republican senate candidate vote-shares each differed from the top of the ticket by an average of 2.4 points.

FOX NEWS POWER RANKINGS: WITH VP PICKS, HARRIS AND TRUMP MISS OPPORTUNITIES TO BROADEN THEIR APPEAL

The outcome of the presidential race will therefore heavily influence the result of most of the 34 senate seats up for election this year. In fact, the Power Rankings have the same party winning the presidential and senate races in every state where one party has an edge in both forecasts.

However, the exceptions to this rule will determine who takes control of the upper chamber.

Republicans are chasing wins